


Untangled

by 221b_hound



Series: Unkissed [25]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hair Brushing, Johnlock Fluff, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Sherlock's Hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 15:14:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2737352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite seeming to have sat motionless for hours on end, Sherlock has been agitated enough to wring his hair into a tangled mess. John starts to untangle it - and Sherlock expects his hair to be painfully pulled. Instead, John Holmes-Watson proves once more to be illuminating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untangled

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write something soothing for myself, and here you have it. I used to have long hair and understand the value of the gentle touch with something like this.

John woke up alone. He blinked blearily at the alarm clock. 3.06am. The sheets beside him were cool. Sherlock hadn’t been in bed for some time. He possibly hadn’t come to bed at all. John had left him pouring over a pile of newspaper cuttings in the sitting room, still as a statue as he contemplated the web of data that was still just newsprint and hyperbole to John.

John levered himself out of bed and walked into the kitchen, hitching up his pyjama pants with one hand as he went. He found a clean glass – then peered into it to be sure it really was clean, because being in the Clean Glass section of the cupboard wasn’t always a guarantee – then stood in the sitting room, sipping water.

Sherlock was where John had left him. Sitting on the sofa, feet up on the seat, arms wrapped around his shins and chin resting on his knees. John thought about asking for a progress report, but if Sherlock hadn’t moved, there likely wasn’t one. Instead, he put the glass on the table, walked over and sat carefully on the seat beside his husband.

Sherlock didn’t move.

John leaned a little sideways, to press his shoulder, arm, thigh against Sherlock’s. He leaned a little further to rest his cheek on Sherlock’s shoulder. Turned his head to kiss the fabric of Sherlock’s cotton shirt, transferring warm pressure to the skin beneath.

He sighed a little, and turned his head again to continue resting his cheek on Sherlock’s shoulder.

He’d noticed, up close, that Sherlock hadn’t been completely motionless during the night because, although his posture appeared unchanged, Sherlock’s hair was a fright. A tangled nest of curls and knots, the result of Sherlock periodically grabbing and twisting his hair. He did that sometimes, trying to get his brain to jump to a new track – or sometimes just to express frustration when he was coming up against dead ends – deliberately giving himself sharp but temporary pain. He would crook his fingers, coiling hair around the joints, and tug fistfuls of dark hair, wincing and hissing at the result. He ended up with a ratty mess that part way reflected the turmoil beneath.

After a moment, during which Sherlock still didn’t move, John drew away. He shifted to kneel sideways on the sofa, so he could wrap an arm across Sherlock’s back, the other around Sherlock’s arms, and he pressed his forehead, then his nose, to Sherlock’s temple.

“It will come to you,” he breathed softly, then kissed Sherlock’s temple softly too, “You’ll find Milverton’s weak spot. You will be amazing.”

Then he let go, ready to let Sherlock continue his contemplation of the puzzle. He’d go back to bed and check on Sherlock again in the morning.

Finally, Sherlock moved, first by taking a deep breath, then by lifting his head a fraction. He turned his gaze to John.

“And if it doesn’t; and I don’t; and I’m not?”

“Then we’ll look somewhere else; and we will find a way; and you always are.”

“Your faith in me is…” Sherlock inhaled as he contemplated the right word, “Misplaced, in this instance.”

“You are always amazing. That will never not be true.”

“That is patently incorrect.”

“No. It is demonstrably accurate. And remember,” John grinned at him, “You’re married to a pretty bloody amazing man yourself. I believe we established that in Spain. So what you can’t do alone, we can do together. We are – and I believe I’m quoting you here – _extraordinary_.”

The hard edge to Sherlock’s expression faded at last, allowing a glimmer of humour to show.

“I’m relieved to find you are paying attention.” Sherlock put his feet on the floor and reached up to run his fingers through his hair, only to find them catching on snags. He frowned and tugged at the tangled strands.

“It’s no good tonight,” said Sherlock, jamming his fingers impatiently into the mess, “It’s all dead ends.” He winced and snarled at the pain of pulled hair.

“Here,” John placed his hands over Sherlock’s, gentling them away from the pain they were inflicting, “I’ll look after that. You relax a bit.”

“John, I can’t just _stop_.”

“You can. Just for a little while. You said yourself it’s all dead ends. You need to let go for just a minute. Breathe. Let some other stimuli in. Yeah?”

Sherlock sighed, disgruntled and unwilling to be soothed, but John kissed his brow. “I’ll be right back.”

“What do you think you’re up to?” then Sherlock paused as he deduced John’s next action. “Really?”

“Do you mind?”

Sherlock considered. “I really have no idea.”

“Then let’s give it a whirl and see if it helps. Grab the cushion and sit on the floor.”

As John padded off to the bathroom, Sherlock shoved a cushion to the floor and then sat on the carpet, cushion pushed between his lower back and the sofa for comfort. He peered at the newspaper clippings again and then, with a scowl, shoved them all off the coffee table. He knew every article by heart now anyway. Scandals and gossip, missing persons and sudden deaths that were probably suicides. The warp and weft of a great web leading to the fat, glossy spider at the middle. Milverton. But nothing Sherlock could hang onto. Nothing he could grasp and tug to unravel the mess. Nothing he could follow to the spider’s lair.

Which was Appledor. A great gleaming mansion built on blood and despair. Photographs of the place were scattered among the clippings. Maps. Blueprints.

_If I were a bloated, poisonous, blackmailing monster, where would I hide my secrets?_

_Where only I could reach them. I would hoard them and check them regularly. I would… nest on them, my little eggs of destruction, waiting for the right time to let them hatch._

The web analogy wasn’t the correct one, Sherlock knew. Milverton was more like a trapdoor spider. Like that extraordinarily venomous arachnid from Australia, the Funnel Web spider – aggressive, secretive, deadly.

 _I will have to beard this monster in its den,_ Sherlock thought, _but how do I enter the funnel web’s den and not be eaten?_

_How do I keep it from scuttling out and eating everyone else?_

John came back with his hands full of combs and brushes, a bottle of de-tangling lotion that Sherlock had cooked up himself and another of scented oil. The hair-tangle was an old problem, this, though irregular. Sherlock had spent years learning how to untangle himself from these… rage-knots, John had called them, when he first encountered them, one night during the whole Moriarty debacle, years ago now.

“You don’t have to…” Sherlock began, knowing what a tedious job it was.

“I know,” said John, settling in behind him on the sofa, “But I’d like to. If I may.”

“You… may.” Sherlock submitted uncertainly as John sat with his knees on either side of Sherlock’s shoulders and squirted lotion into the mess of curls.

Sherlock braced himself for the sharp pull and the eye-watering pain. That of course had been the inevitable result when he was small and anybody else at all had tried to help him with knots. Mummy had no patience for it at all, and Mycroft only marginally more so, though he had a faint recollection that his father had been more successful.

Instead of careless and stubborn jerks on his hair and scalp, however, there was just the slightest sensation of movement as John worked the lotion into the strands with his fingers. Sherlock closed his eyes and concentrated briefly on that feeling. John selecting a lock of hair and smoothing the pads of his fingers down it, then working his thumbnails between the snarled strands. When John encountered an intransigent knot, instead of fighting it, John’s fingers slid over it and continued with the easier ones. Then he would start high up again and slowly work down again, loosening the disorder a little more each time.

John began to hum a soft tune and Sherlock permitted himself to relax a little more, trusting to his touch. He closed his eyes and listened to John’s wordless voice. Sherlock didn’t recognise the melody, but that wasn’t unusual with John’s songs. Ridiculous love songs, all.

With a small sigh, Sherlock leaned into the sofa at his back, placing his hands over the top of John’s bare feet. John leaned over to press a kiss to the crown of Sherlock’s head then resumed his careful working of his thumbnails through the loosening knots. Softly, he began to sing the words.

_I will come for you at night time_   
_I will raise you from your sleep_   
_I will kiss you in four places_   
_I’ll go running along your street._

What nonsense, Sherlock thought, loving every syllable.

_I will squeeze the life out of you_   
_You will make me laugh and make me cry_   
_We will never forget it_   
_You will make me call your name_   
_And I will shout it to the blue summer sky._

“John,’ he murmured.

“Yes, sweetling?”

“I won’t let him harm you.”

“I know you won’t, my precious honeybee.”

Sherlock smiled and let his fingers stroke the top of John’s toes. John kept singing and gently separating the knots.

After a long time that seemed both timeless and too short, John picked up a wide-toothed comb to work on the remaining knots. He started near the ends of each lock and combed carefully, holding the strands firmly between two fingers so that he didn’t pull Sherlock’s scalp.

 _You will throw your arms around me_ , sang John, and Sherlock knew it for truth.

When John encountered a truly stubborn knot, he dabbed on jojoba oil and wriggled the comb’s teeth into the snag and tried again, never putting too much pressure on Sherlock’s hair or skin. Softly, slowly, gently.

John sang and hummed as he worked, and it took hours, but he never seemed to tire or grow bored. He paused occasionally to kiss the top of Sherlock’s head, or his temple, or his neck, and then resumed his patient ministrations.

The sky was beginning to blush with morning light when John put the comb and lotions aside.

Sherlock, in a pleasant doze, opened his eyes, then closed them again, loving the feeling of John’s knees pressed against his ribs and arms, of John’s bare feet under his fingers, of John’s lips pressed to his hair.

“There you go, sweet one. My glorious dandelion.”

Sherlock shifted his fingers again, stroking John’s skin.

“Do you know,” he said, “How Australians kill funnel web spiders if they find one in their yard?”

John behaved as though this was the most reasonable response in the world. “With beer and Vegemite?”

“They pour boiling water into the nest. And they have a friend on back-up to smash it with a shovel if the spider makes a run for it.”

“Sounds like the Australians I’ve met. They’d probably just use a pair of flip-flops for the smashing bit. They’re nutters, all of them, man, woman and child.”

“What can you expect?” Sherlock asked softly, “They’re surrounded by things that want to kill them, from the wildlife to the climate. Let’s never go there.”

“Fine by me.” John’s voice was filled with incipient laughter.

“You are, by the way,” added Sherlock, “Amazing. Illuminating. As always.”

“I know,” said John, and the laughter bubbled out in a sleepy giggle, “My husband thinks I’m bloody fantastic and I believe him.”

“I don’t have the resolution quite yet,” said Sherlock, “But new paths of thought have opened up. I needed a breather, as you so accurately noted.”

“See? Bloody fantastic.”

Sherlock wrapped his hands around John’s and drew them up to kiss his knuckles. John’s hands were soft with the lotion and oils he’d used on Sherlock’s hair.

“How did you know how to do that? Untangle my hair without pulling?”

“I watched you do it once,” John confessed.

Sherlock kissed the back of John’s hands again, and then his wrists. “Back to bed,” he said, “We have a lot to do, but not yet. Rest first.”

Obediently, John rose and took the hair accessories back to their bathroom. He washed his hands while Sherlock stood behind him and kissed his neck. Then, in bed, Sherlock gathered John close to him while John willingly snugged in tight, arm across Sherlock’s waist, a leg crooked over Sherlock’s thigh.

“I take it I’ll be holding the shovel while you pour the boiling water,” he mumbled against Sherlock’s skin.

“Or something to that effect, yes.”

Sherlock felt John’s smile against his chest, and pressed his nose into John’s fine hair.

Really, Sherlock thought, John had no right to feel so obviously proud of him. John Watson’s husband was sometimes as thick as a plank and terribly slow on the uptake. Mr Watson-Holmes was still unlearning a lifetime of lessons that he had to do things on his own. That he had to solve every problem, dismiss every threat, untangle every knot, without assistance, and simply endure the pain of it.

He wasn’t sure yet how the spider would be destroyed in its nest, but it would be. It would take courage and trust, which the Holmes-Watson husbands had in abundance, though it remained to be seen if others would rise to that challenge.

But Milverton would be scorched in his own lair, and robbed of his power. John Watson had faith they could do it, and Sherlock chose to believe him.

**Author's Note:**

> John sings [Throw Your Arms around Me by Hunters and Collectors](http://youtu.be/5-hDK76bIps), an Australian band.


End file.
